鉈あげて きらんとすれば 木の芽かな nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana shiki 子規 Lifting up the hatchet, To cut it down, It was budding

Lifting up the hatchet,
To cut it down,
It was budding

鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな (nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana): hatchet raised, about to cut, and there, the buds. 鉈 is the woodsman's short heavy blade; あげてきらんとすれば is raised it and was about to cut, when, the turn inside すれば that carries a discovery; 木の芽, konome, is the tree's buds, the spring season word; かな closes on the buds and holds the arrest. It is the buds that stop the hand. In the preface to his last volume, Blyth found in it the haiku poet's tenderness of mind, shown, he said, almost too distinctly. A small verse of a young man's spring: the cut is coming, the buds are seen only now, and the verse is the stop.

Translation by R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume Four: Autumn-Winter (1952), Preface, page vii.

Shiki entered the verse among his verses of 1893 in 寒山落木, the manuscript collection of his own haiku, and it was first printed in 1924, in the first volume of his collected works.

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Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase